Information Technology Services (ITS) started seeing an increase in reports of email messages being received in Washburn mail accounts with the following text:

This sender failed our fraud detection checks and may not be who they appear to be. Learn about spoofing (link to Microsoft site about spoofing).

The message typically goes directly to the Junk folder on the Office 365 Washburn email account. We believe the cause of this happening is that the sender is sending the message from another source (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) and setting their From address as their Washburn address. We are tracking this and will update if we discover additional information.

If you have your mail forwarded to another email address, we would suggest that when responding to those forwarded messages that the From address of the respective mail service is used. When setting the From address to your washburn.edu email address and sending from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., this will cause the text above to display the notice to the recipient as listed above.

The change in seeing the new notice on messages sent in this manner is a change from Microsoft. It is not something we in ITS can control.

Any questions or concerns, please contact ITS User Services at 785-670-3000 or send email to support@washburn.edu.

I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that ITS will never ask for your account information especially your password. If you are ever unsure about an email message, feel free to forward it to support@washburn.edu or call us at 785-670-3000. A message asking you to update your account information is spam.

By marking messages as junk (or blocking sender), this trains the email system to treat similar messages as junk in the future sending those directly to the Junk Email folder. This is true not only for your mailbox, but it helps others on campus also to send those messages to the junk folder campus wide.

A message that is obviously spam that is in your junk folder does not need to be forwarded to ITS. The message was flagged appropriately and went to the junk folder for the entire campus.

The past few weeks, we have seen an increase in spam. If the message is already in the junk folder, the message can be deleted or the junk folder emptied.

Marking a Message as Junk

A message that is in your inbox and that is spam, the best next step is for you to mark it as junk or block the sender. This can be done in Outlook Web and Outlook desktop clients. There are a few different methods to mark a message as spam, but for this post, we will keep the process short.

Locate the message in your message index.

Right click on the message.

Select

Outlook Web: Mark as Junk

PC Outlook: Junk > Block Sender

Outlook for Mac: Junk > Mark as Junk

The above will move the message to the Junk folder and train the email system to block those in the future.

If you are ever unsure about a message and whether it is junk, please feel free to forward it to support@washburn.edu.

Clutter and Messages in Clutter Folder

As a reminder, Clutter was enabled by Microsoft summer 2015. It is not something that we can turn off globally, but did want to remind you how you can turn it off if so desired. Please refer to the blog post from August 2015 (Microsoft Clutter Showing up on Washburn Email Accounts) to disable (or enable) Clutter. Note that messages that are moved to the Clutter folder are considered inbox messages. Thus, if a message is in the Clutter folder that is junk email, the same steps should be used to classify it as spam and no need to notify ITS support about the message.

Questions

We are here to help with any questions. We want you to be safe in doing your job. If there are any questions about messages, links, etc., please do not hesitate to contact us in ITS User Services. Our phone number is 785-670-3000 and email is support@washburn.edu.

In April, we posted a notice of a new feature Microsoft was rolling out called Clutter. The purpose of Clutter was to help clean up your mailbox. Microsoft was going to roll out this feature to all Office 365 customers in a random manner. We have started receiving reports that Clutter is being enabled for some people. Some ITS staff have also had it turned on and noticed messages going to another folder called Clutter.

If you notice that messages are not showing up in your inbox, check to see if there is a folder called Clutter. If you like the messages that are being moved to that folder then you do not need to do anything. If you wish to turn off this feature and instead of your email delivered to your inbox, the steps below will help you to turn off this feature.

To turn off this feature, unselect “Separate items identified as clutter”.

Click Save at the top of the screen.

This will turn off this feature so that messages are not separated out from your inbox automatically by Microsoft. Additional information about Clutter, as well as to enable or disable, can be found on the Microsoft Clutter website.

Messages in the Clutter folder will remain until they are deleted or removed.

If you have any problems or questions, please contact ITS User Services at 785-670-3000 or by sending email to support@washburn.edu.

Microsoft Office 365 has been rolling out a new feature called “Clutter.” This feature in Office 365 is designed to help you focus on the most important messages in your inbox by moving lower priority messages out of your way and into a new Clutter folder. Clutter uses machine learning and user interactions to determine which email messages to filter and move from the inbox into the Clutter folder. Essentially, the system evaluates which messages you read and which ones are ignored and learns which messages to move to the Clutter folder.

By default, Clutter is not enabled. You must enable it via the Options in your Outlook Web settings. If you would like to learn more about this feature and how to enable it, please see this page, http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=506974.

We’ve become aware that Microsoft has started sending notifications to users alerting them to this new feature. These are legitimate messages from Microsoft and will look similar to the following. The links in these messages will take you to legitimate Microsoft Web sites. You are not required to enable this feature and can safely ignore the message from Microsoft if you wish.

Below is an example of a message that is sent through by Microsoft about the new Clutter clean up.

Clutter places these items into their own folder, helping you focus on your most important messages. If Clutter gets it wrong, you can move messages and conversations back into the inbox, and vice versa. And Clutter will learn from its mistakes. If you have questions, go here.

Say hello to a cleaner inbox.

This system notification isn’t an email message and you can’t reply to it.

Thanks to Eileen for writing up this message as we start to see the campus reporting the notices.

Overnight a number of people received a well-constructed phishing e-mail that went to an exact replica of MyWashburn (http://my.washburn.edu). It would have looked something like the screenshot below. If you clicked this link and entered your username and password on the following page, please contact support@washburn.edu so we can take actions to remediate the issue.

In order to discern this as phishing, there are a few indicators:

1) The FROM address is not a washburn.edu account:

2) If you hover your cursor over the link, you can see it does not go to a Washburn website:

3) The website that link directs you to does not have a washburn.edu address:

If you missed those indicators, it was very easy to miss the fact that this is not in fact a Washburn e-mail or website.

There’s a new look for Office 365 as well as some changes to the service for the Spring semester

New Login Page – On Sunday, February 1st, ITS will go live with a new login page. This not only looks better than the old page, it also eliminates the bug that caused Google Chrome not to work correctly in some cases, particularly with SharePoint Online:

New Office Web Interface – Microsoft recently rolled out an updated look for the Office 365 web interface that’s designed to be more mobile-friendly. This presents you with tiles for the Office Apps you have available, accessible from the upper-left corner of the screen:

Office 2013/Office 365 Apps available for students – Students currently enrolled in classes have access to both the web-based version of Office applications as well as the traditional desktop versions for free. Students can download Office by logging in to the web interface, clicking on “Office 365” at the top of the screen and clicking on the “Install now” button:

On November 11, 2014, Microsoft started allowing faculty and staff the ability to download and install the full Office suite on their personally owned devices. Prior to this date, the only option was to purchase the Office suite for your home computer. The steps below will assist you in activating your account and then download and install Office for your home computer(s).

Note: This is only for personally owned devices and not for university owned computers.

Note that using your Washburn email account and the directions below, it is possible to install the Office suite on up to five devices (PC or Mac). It is also possible to use mobile versions of the office programs on such devices as iPhones or iPads.

In order to install the office suite, it is first necessary to activate the product for your account. Unlike the Office suite for students, it is not automatically activated for all faculty and staff. Click on the following link to: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=512196

Enter your Washburn email address and click Sign Up.

A confirmation should display saying “You already have an account”, click Continue.

The Office suite, whether on PC or Mac, will remain updated and current as long as you are employed, or have an account, with Washburn University. Once you leave Washburn, the program will stop working and prompt you to purchase through Microsoft.

Any problems or questions, please contact ITS User Services at support@washburn.edu or by calling 785-670-3000.